Chapter 6 - The Crumbling Facade
By the autumn of the following year, the economic realities of Ethan’s choices caught up with him in the most brutal way possible. Marcus called me into his office on a rainy Thursday afternoon.
"It’s over for them, Tom," Marcus said, sliding a public foreclosure notice across the desk. "The condo is going up for auction next month. Ethan couldn't make the payments. And there's more."
I looked at the paperwork. Seeing my family name listed on a foreclosure document sent a pang of old-fashioned prideful hurt through my chest, but I kept my face stoic. "What else?"
"Ashley filed for divorce last week," Marcus said gently. "She cited irreconcilable differences, but her lawyer is gunning for whatever assets Ethan has left. She’s even trying to claim a percentage of his future inheritance—meaning this house."
I laughed out loud, a cold, sharp sound. "She’s trying to sue for a piece of a house he doesn't own? She really is as foolish as she is greedy."
"She is," Marcus agreed. "But Ethan is completely broken. My associate saw him at the courthouse. He looks like a ghost, Tom. He’s living in a cheap, one-bedroom studio apartment on the rough side of town. He lost the cars, the wife, the social status. He has nothing left but his job."
I stood up and walked to the window, watching the rain pelt against the glass. I thought about Ethan as a little boy, holding my hand as we walked through the hardware store, proudly wearing a tiny tool belt I had made for him. Where did that boy go? Did he die, or was he just buried underneath years of entitlement and bad choices?
"Thank you, Marcus," I said, putting on my coat.
"What are you going to do, Tom?"
"I'm going to talk to my wife," I said. "This is her decision now."
When I got home, I laid the foreclosure and divorce documents on the kitchen table in front of Linda. She read through them slowly, her fingers trembling slightly as she touched the papers. I braced myself for her tears, for her to beg me to give him money, to buy back his condo, to fix his mess.
But Linda surprised me. She closed the folder, took a deep breath, and looked up at me with absolute clarity.
"He had to hit the bottom, Tom," she said softly. "If we had saved him earlier, he would have just hated us for making him feel weak. Now he knows the truth about the world, and about the woman he chose over his own family."
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"Do you want me to reach out to him?" I asked.
"No," Linda said, standing up and taking my hand. "A man who cannot walk to his parents' house on his own two feet to beg for forgiveness is a man who isn't ready to be saved. We wait, Tom. We wait until he knocks on our door."
